InHealth: Interventional Pain Management

By Morgan Callahan, MD | May 2021

Interventional pain management is an exciting, new specialty in the world of medicine, where a multidisciplinary approach is taken to not only treat pain but also restore function and mobility. Interventional pain physicians focus on the diagnosis and treatment of your pain while working closely with therapists, primary care physicians and other specialists. Interventional pain physicians treat everything from back and neck pain to cancer-related pain, and even pain from arthritic joints that interfere with your day-to-day activities.

How do I know if I should see an interventional pain management physician?

If you have pain that has not improved with conservative treatment such as physical therapy, ice, or rest, and does not improve with Tylenol or other over the counter pain medication, then talking to an interventional pain physician is a great next step. Common procedures like epidural steroid injections can relieve sciatic-type pain. Other procedures like nerve blocks and radiofrequency ablations can treat back and neck pain due to arthritis without the use of steroids. If you are interested in alternative pain management options to avoid surgery, you can speak with an interventional pain management physician about the growing field of natural biological substances, such as platelet rich plasma.

What is Platelet Rich Plasma?

Platelets play a crucial role in mediating the healing of injured tissue, and thus have become a novel delivery tool for growth factors. Growth factors are peptides that are critical in wound healing and are secreted by numerous substances in the human body, including platelets. A patient’s own blood can be drawn and then put in a centrifuge to concentrate the blood and extract out the platelet rich plasma (PRP). This PRP has four to eight times the concentration of platelets found in normal blood. Growth factors have been shown to cause tissue repair, but their effects are confined mostly to the site of delivery.

What can be treated with Platelet Rich Plasma?

PRP can be injected into arthritic joints, for example, and will begin to release growth factors within minutes. Numerous large, randomized controlled trials have demonstrated that PRP injections in knees leads to improved physical function and decreased pain or stiffness when compared to intra-articular steroid and viscosupplementation injections in the knee. Most importantly, these studies have demonstrated that PRP injections are safe. PRP is a great option to expedite healing and recovery from injured muscles, ligaments, or even arthritis, and is a great alternative for surgery.  

Pain Medicine Group 
Morgan Callahan, MD
2621 Cattlemen Road, Sarasota, FL 34232
941.328.8276
www.painmedicinegroup.com